Measuring carbohydrates in lignocellulosic biomass is a basic and important part for researching the conversion of these materials to fuels, feed, food, or fiber. A widely used procedure is to hydrolyze the carbohydrates to monomers with sulfuric acid followed by HPLC measurement. However, from previous research it is known that it is not easy to completely hydrolyze biomass to fermentable sugars due to both particle size and highly crystalline regions, bringing into question both the accuracy and best methodology for acid hydrolysis. In the present work, pure carbohydrate materials were hydrolyzed, and the recoveries of the carbohydrates were used to characterize the accuracy of this method and identify test artifacts. The results indicate that the recoveries of carbohydrates from the standard method are lower than 100%, with the amount of carbohydrates in most lignocellulosic biomass underestimated by 7%-12%. With improvements carbohydrate measurements were shown to be improved approaching 100% of theoretical.

Validation of lignocellulosic biomass carbohydrates determination via acid catalyzed hydrolysis

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.